Geek Girl Tech Con

We don’t normally take field trips, but when we do they are to the Geek Girl Tech Conference.

This week Launch Academy headed to the Microsoft NERD center in Cambridge to experience some major girl power and to indulge in maybe a few too many slices of free pizza—can you blame us?

We wouldn’t be Launch if we didn’t do a little teaching while we were there. Our Experience Engineers held back-to-back Ruby workshops; a super fun crash course in programming basics for everyone attending. Part one covered fundamentals like datatypes, variables and methods. Part two, for those who were ready to learn even more, dove a little deeper into writing Ruby code.

Most importantly though, everyone was encouraged to have open discussions and collaborate to find the best way to solve problems. By the end of the second workshop, attendees were able to create a virtual Rock, Paper, Scissors game.

Talk about acceleration.

Overall we were pretty jazzed about Geek Girl because it was an amazing platform to meet like-minded women interested in tech and combating gender stereotypes in the tech industry. But the fun and lady power didn’t stop there. Attendees also had the option of sitting in on a career panel with experts from the industry including our very own Sr. Director of Business Development and Career Services Corinne. The panel covered everything from what to put on your resume to standing out and landing the dream job.

And it wouldn’t be a Launch party if a few alums didn’t join us. It was a great chance to catch up with former students and drum up excitement about women in tech.

So thanks to Geek Girl for having us. We learned a lot and had a blast meeting women who are kicking major butt in their fields.